There are no unlawful orders if the commanding officer gives them.
23 comments
I was just reading about the Nuremberg trials, it was the featured article on Wikipedia, since yesterday was the 80th anniversary of the start of that. The “I was just following orders defense” didn’t really work back then, so why should it still work now?
Also, I’m pretty sure that in the US (and I would think in all countries that aren’t military dictatorships!), members of the military have the right to refuse an unlawful order.
In a recent military survey of active-duty troops, 80% said that they would not obey an illegal order, 9% said they would, 9% said they weren’t sure, and 2% refused to answer. So the military itself mostly doesn’t agree with you there.
TL;DR: Unless you’re in Canada–and possibly even then–the “just following orders” idea is bullshit, and we’ve known that since 1474.
All right, EK, you've just been drafted into the Trump militia. General Admiral Dictator for Life and All-Around Dipshit Messiah DJT hereby orders you to shoot your family and then yourself.
Still think there are no illegal orders?
In the USA, unlawful orders, even from the President himself, ar not to be obeyed since [i]Little v. Barreme[/i] (1804).
@Ceratarges #242005
In fact, the only legal system in the world that accepts “just following orders” as a legal defense is Canada, in the Imre Finta case (he deported thousands of Jews to their deaths on the orders of a superior and was acquitted). The Rome Statute does not accept this, for what it’s worth, and Canada is a member of the ICC. Don’t know if that means they’re breaking their own laws or something
I wonder why did the Canadian accept as defenses the fact that Finta believed in "Jewish sentiment in favour of the Allied forces" and that "the Jews were subversive and disloyal to the war efforts of Hungary." With this, given that all genocide authors believe that thir victims are subversive and thus to be killed in self-defense, they might as well remove genocide from their penal code.
@JeanP #242085
In 2014 a Nazi hunter said Canada was a haven for Nazis: here , with it at the time having an impressive successful prosecution rate of zero percent. Out of “up to 5,000″.this which is also the source for the 5k Jews statistic).
So if a staff sergeant orders a corporal to shoot a command sergeant major that’s a lawful order? Because even if the command sergeant major outranks the other two that IS an order coming from the corporal’s immediate CO is it not? Should the corporal consider the order lawful by default and immediately obey? Or two officers of equal rank demanding the other be shot?
Think carefully about those absolutes, would you kindly?
@Ceratarges #242005
Of my country’s many sins - our constant disregard for the dignity and written treaties of our Indigenous peoples, the brutal reputation earned in the trenches and rumoured “take no prisoners” mentality, adopting the use of chemical weapons in WWI, preaching human rights but picking sides politically based on what is advantageous, the fact that most of the Geneva conventions were written BASED ON CANADIAN ACTIONS in war we ourselves pushed to criminalize once the long-term effects became plain to see and the morality beyond “our lives vs their lives” could be looked at objectively without the emotional framework of living through combat and constant danger and loss - “orders from above, right or wrong” is not one of the things we’ve come to accept. Ask James McNight, who defied an order to leave civilians to die in the cold and whose case made the inclusion of the treatment of civilians in updates to international law necessary. To know an act is wrong the outcome must be known and the wrongs defined. Further Imre Finta wasn’t absolved of his crimes in the eyes of Canada’s government even though he personally remained a citizen until dying in a nursing home. Precisely because of the difficult to litigate unknowns going forward rather than litigating whether the outcome of their actions could be known or whether they could be held morally culpable if acting under duress such as threat of death for insubordination Canada took the - admittedly weaselly - path of simply stripping individuals prosecuted in Canada for such crimes of their citizenship and deporting them to the countries where the crimes actually occurred to face judgment under their standards instead of our own where reasonable doubt applies. Effectively outsourcing the punishment to get around our own legal standards. He was not acquitted based on following orders, he was acquitted on the premise that it could not be proven beyond reasonable doubt he knew what lay in store for the people he transported or that threat of death for disobedience or aiding in the escape of “enemies of the state” could be discounted. It was precisely because of the outcome of the trial of Imre Finta this new legal procedure came to be, he is not proof we accept such excuses quite the opposite his acquittal is why we changed things to make sure the excuse can’t find new loopholes and those changes are exactly what debunk that accusation. Simply trying him again after new laws and procedures were put in place because we could not stomach the outcome of the trial and applying them retroactively to guarantee the desired result sets a very dangerous precedent.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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